HOF '13: Jonathan Ogden's odd odyssey

The very move that has kept Art Modell out of the Hall of Fame is the one that resulted of Jonathan Ogden going into it as a Baltimore Raven. Here is the strange story of how Ogden’s NFL journey began in Cleveland when a Browns scout was sent to spy on him.

It goes without saying that 6-foot-9 Jonathan Ogden earned his trip to Canton. They told us in New Orleans his election was like a yes or no vote on clean drinking water.

“When you played against Jonathan,” as contemporary sackmaster Michael Strahan put it, “you prayed you didn’t get embarrassed.”

The two greatest left tackles, the consensus suggests, are Cincinnati’s Anthony Munoz and Ogden.

Forgive those, Mr. Ogden, who hate that you arrive as the first career Baltimore Raven to get bronze busted. Not your fault. A fascinating tale, to be sure.

Ogden’s Maryland beginning was all about a grievous Ohio end.

The Cleveland Browns were dead as of a Christmas Eve 1995 loss at Jacksonville. The Cleveland Browns offices, though, were all the Baltimore Whatevers had.

Members of the 1995 Browns staff prepared for the 1996 draft in Berea while townspeople drove by giving the building sick looks. Bill Belichick and Michael Lombardi were still the head coach and top personnel man when the team’s transfer to Baltimore was approved on Feb. 9. Those two headed for Indianapolis to represent the Baltimore Whatevers at the Combine. Ozzie Newsome, five years into a jump from Browns tight end to Browns personnel guy, went with them.

“We had two scouts working on the west coast (Ogden’s region, as a UCLA player),” Newsome recalls. “Jonathan came to the Combine but didn’t work out. We did not interview him.

“That was back when you had to chase guys down to interview them. I wasn’t in charge as to who to interview. These were not my decisions.”

Then, suddenly, they were.

As the Combine ended, Art Modell, the owner who fired Cleveland, canned Belichick and Lombardi, replacing them with Ted Marchibroda and Newsome. Phil Savage, a rising Browns scout who turned 30 the month of the 1995 draft, became Newsome’s right-hand man.

Belichick and Lombardi returned to Berea to box up their things. Newsome and Savage went back to Ohio to work on Jonathan Ogden.

“We actually met in Berea quite a while after the Combine, until the end of March,” Savage recalls.

The team wasn’t named the Ravens until March 29. The draft was on April 20.

Ogden had been on the Belichick-Lombardi radar many months earlier. The Browns literally spied on him and other prospects at the 1995 preseason Playboy All-American dinner. At that point, such teams were as real as bunny love.

The Belichick-Lombardi Browns regime sent young scouts there to gauge behavior in a land of temptation. The 1995 spy, Detroit Lions head coach Jim Schwartz, was then a 28-year-old scout.

“It was on Mother’s Day weekend in Arizona,” Lombardi says. “Jim finished second in his class at Georgetown as an economics major. Smart guy, in his 20s, willing to work 20 hours a day.

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“We sent him out to this Playboy thing to watch players when nobody thought they were being watched.”

A photograph of that 1995 preseason all-star team includes Keyshawn Johnson, one of the all-time wide receiver divas, Michigan running back Tim Biakabutuka, and Roman Oben, who would become a left tackle for the expansion Browns.

Lombardi didn’t say whether Schwartz had a spy camera, but ...

“We told Jim not to wear the Browns logo,” Lombardi said. “Make ’em think you’re the guy that works at the hotel.

“Jim came back with these notes ... I mean, these notes belong in the Hall of Fame. He wrote ’em up like you couldn’t believe.”

Lombardi claims to still have the notes, although he declined to share them for this article. He did indicate Ogden was well behaved.

Ogden lived up to the preseason hype, winning the Outland Trophy. He played his final game as a UCLA Bruin on Christmas day — the Aloha Bowl against Kansas — the day after the Browns breathed their last in a 24-21 loss to a start-up expansion team, the Jaguars.

Newsome and Savage both liked Ogden before their ascent to power. What was not to like?

“Jonathan really was a can’t-miss prospect,” Savage says. “He had every physical attribute you would want in a left tackle. He was extremely athletic for that size. He had strong character. He was intelligent.”

On draft day, a nervous Newsome wasn’t sure about Ogden until the team whose future was now in his hands was on the clock with the No. 4 pick. Keyshawn Johnson went to the Jets at No. 1. The Jaguars took Kevin Hardy at No. 2. Newsome held his breath for 15 minutes before the Cardinals finally chose Simeon Rice, not Ogden.

Being positioned at No. 4, Newsome went into the draft with four names he could live with. He would take whomever was left from among Johnson, Hardy, Ogden and running back Lawrence Phillps.

Phillips was a red flag big enough to cover a cornfield. His assault of an ex-girlfriend was among indiscretions that drew cries for his suspension from a game between his team, No. 1 Nebraska, and No. 2 Florida, on Jan. 2. He played. He ran for 165 yards. His role in a 62-24 victory intoxicated scouts, coaches and owners, among them Modell.

The rushing leader of the 1995 Browns had been Leroy Hoard, with 547 yards.

“In my view,” Savage says, “Ted Marchibroda and Mr. Modell thought Lawrence Phillips in some ways was going to provide more sizzle and splash than Jonathan Ogden. He had absolutely just run roughshod over Florida.”

When the personnel chiefs told Modell that Ogden was a better choice than Phillips, Savage recalls the owner saying, “But we need a running back.”

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Newsome, Marchibroda, team president Jim Bailey, Modell and Savage met the Friday before the draft. By then, Berea was dark. The room was in Owings Mills, Md.,

Savage: “I vividly remember saying to Mr. Modell, ‘If we take Jonathan Ogden, we’ll be able to put our head on the pillow at night and not worry about what he’s doing outside the facility. And if we take the other guy, we will never know on a nightly basis what’s going on with him.’”

Phillips washed out of the league after playing for four teams and rushing 1,453 yards at 3.4 per carry. Now 39, he has spent recent years in prison in California.

With a nod to what might have been, Newsome now says, “Drafting Jonathan Ogden is the reason I have my job today.”

At the time Newsome made that call, the Ravens didn’t even have team colors.

“I was in New York, and Ozzie called me,” Ogden recalls. “I came out on the stage. They gave me a white hat with black letters that said Baltimore Ravens. They gave me a black coat with white letters ... Baltimore Ravens.

“I’m like, ‘What is this?’ On my first rookie (football) card, I had a white helmet on.”

Relocating to Baltimore stands as a crime in the minds of many Browns fans. Committing it during the 1995 Browns season had its ironic rewards.

The ’95 Browns were coming off an 11-5 year. They got off to a shaky start but stabilized. An overtime win at Cincinnati got them to the halfway point at 4-4. Then the bomb dropped.

“I guarantee you if we don't get into this whole sideshow, that the team would have been better than it was the year before,” linebacker Carl Banks said in 1997.

“During the preseason,” added Banks, who had been a Giants stalwart before joining Belichick’s Browns, “we were starting to form a locker-room chemistry that champions are made of. Then all hell breaks loose.”

The Browns went 1-7 after the announcement. The collapse resulted in the 5-11 record that netted the No. 4 overall pick that delivered Jonathan Ogden.

Ogden went on to give the Ravens 176 starts. Starting in 1997, he went to 11 straight Pro Bowls.

Figuratively, literally, Ogden was a huge pick.

“When he first came in the door,” says publicist Kevin Byrne, who made the jump from Cleveland to Baltimore and watched Ogden’s entire career, “he was the door. He actually filled the door.

“Then in the first few practices, you saw a man that size running like Karl Malone.”

Malone was the NBA’s most valuable player during a season that began when Ogden was a Ravens rookie.

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Ogden’s first NFL position coach was Kirk Ferentz, who became head coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes in 1999. Ferentz, who survived the jump from Cleveland, had a dilemma. He had received strong play at left tackle from in Cleveland from Tony Jones.

It would have been a slap in the face to move the veteran to left guard. The solution was to make the obvious left tackle of the future, Ogden, the left guard for 1996.

It didn’t really matter to the record. A team almost everyone thought in 1994 was on the rise crash-landed in its first year in Maryland at 4-12. No one blamed the left guard.

The slap came later, on Feb. 15, 1997, when the Ravens traded Jones to Denver for a second-round draft pick.

“It's a business, and the players should understand that, but at least come up front and tell them, and not hide it,” Jones told the Baltimore Sun that day. “They hid it. I knew it. They said Jonathan and I were going to be the best one-two punch in the league. I said, ‘Sure, right.’”

Jones didn’t exactly leave empty-handed. He was the left tackle for Denver teams that won the next two Super Bowls.

Things wouldn’t be right with the Ravens for years, but at left tackle, with Ogden, it was all good.

“From the first practice with Jonathan, you knew you were next to greatness,” Ferentz says. “His combination of size, talent, skill and intelligence were the best I’ve ever seen.”

Ogden was a Pro Bowl alternate as a rookie. He went to the first of his 11 Pro Bowls in his first year as a left tackle. He helped the team win a Super Bowl in his fifth season, had a last hurrah with a 2006 team that went 13-3, then retired after the 2007 season.

Savage was Newsome’s right-hand man in Baltimore’s personnel department for most of Ogden’s career. Then, as general manager of the Browns from 2005-08, Savage observed Ogden as an opponent.

“In Baltimore, when we watched film of ourselves on Mondays, you literally watched the other 10 guys on offense, because you just knew that Jonathan was doing his job,” Savage said. “You just took it for granted the entire time he played for Baltimore that the guy coming off the left tackle side would be blocked.

“There was no concern about it whatsoever.

“He was such a rare talent, and he was so consistent. He was still playing at a high level after I went to Cleveland.”

Newsome’s Ogden overview dovetails with Savage’s.

“On a Monday when we are watching a game tape,” he said, “sometimes you could forget about the other 10 guys because you just ended up watching how Jonathan dominated his opponent.

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“For 12 years, we did have a luxury. Not at any point against any defender did we ever have to worry about who was rushing from that right side. We knew there were going to be some good battles, but we never, at any point, felt like Jonathan was going to lose one. And he didn’t.”

Ogden was a vaporizer in both protection and run blocking. He was a big factor in Jamal Lewis running for 500 yards in two games against the Browns and 2,066 yards against the league in 2003.

Through it all, Ogden said he played with a simple mindset: “Destroy the person in front of you.”

Ironically, in 2007, the Browns had a great rookie tackle, Joe Thomas, blocking for Lewis. The Browns posted their best record, 10-6, since before the move to Baltimore. They beat Ogden’s team twice in the latter’s final season.

Ogden struggled with turf toe. He missed five games. After he came back, the Ravens went on a nine-game losing streak. His last hurrah ended the streak — a 27-21 home win over Pittsburgh.

He didn’t announce his retirement until after the Ravens’ spring practice in 2008.

That day, the names of players he blocked flashed in front of his eyes.

“Dwight Freeney recently, Kevin Greene and Greg Lloyd in the old days ... I’ve had a lot of good battles over the years,” he said.

What if those battles had been as a Cleveland Brown? It probably never would have happened, since the Browns’ 1995 season would not have imploded and yielded such a high draft pick.

What if the Arizona Cardinals had picked him at No. 3 overall? It probably wouldn’t have mattered. He would have been who he was, a rare bird with a ticket to Canton.